


Absolute Zero

by orphan_account



Category: Frozen (2013), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Crossover, Disney, Elemental Magic, F/M, Fluff, Romance, Short updates, christmas is coming up so i might as well, frozen stuff and a hell of a lot of snow, please don't hate elsa because it was a mistake (you'll understand in chapter two), pretty obvious what to expect
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-06 16:57:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12821955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Elsa, the turbulent princess of a kingdom hidden in the north.Jack Frost, the forgotten boy who uses his ice powers for more good than evil.Tied together by destiny.[ also available on Wattpad ]





	1. Born Of Cold And Winter Air

Elsa stood in her castle, alone.  Knowing that they were approaching - the people of Arendelle, disappointed and angry - with weapons and horses and discontentment.  What was she meant to do?  Turn herself in and suffer death or, worse, a lifetime of even more suppression of her powers?  She shook her head slowly, gliding across the intricately designed ice floor to settle on her balcony.  The mountain was as harshly cold as ever, but she never felt it as much more than a light breeze, scratching her upper arms.  She saw the specks of brown and black that made up the hunting party of  _her own kingdom_ and sighed.

_I'm not ready for this._

A single tear rolled down her deathly pale cheek, freezing on her icy skin within moments.  She brushed it away, steeling herself for the inevitable battle.  Would Anna be with them?

_Would Jack?_

 

\- - - - -

 

The fair-haired girl laughed loudly, materialising column after column of snow for her younger sister to play on.

"Faster, Elsa!" Anna cried, giggling with joy.  A white-haired boy reclined behind Elsa, lazily observing the excitement of Anna with a heavy-lidded eye.  He occasionally puffed out a cold breath that brushed the hair curled behind the older girl's ear, tickling her face and making it scrunch up cutely.  The princesses of Arendelle were bubbling with happiness and mischief when, just as the boy was about to join in the fun, he tripped and fell straight into Elsa.

He was expecting to fall right through her.

Unfortunately, just as he felt the tips of his fingers graze her shoulder, something  _real_ , something tangible, she was about to fire a shot.  With a flinch and a gasp, she desperately tried to catch her stupid, stupid younger sister, and... hit her.  The boy looked on in horror, still clutching the hand that had  _touched_ Elsa and still wanting to feel it again.  Anna's body thudded limply as it landed on the cold floor of the huge castle room, the magic of the moment draining instantly and sending an uncharacteristic shiver through Elsa's body.  She clutched her sister's head to her chest, crying desperately and yearning to stroke the now bleached strands of hair, too afraid to even touch Anna for fear of hurting her more.

Meanwhile, the boy was running through scenarios in his head.  Help Anna anonymously, without owning up to his mistake, or tell Elsa who he was and actually talk to someone for the first time in forever?  It only took a moment for him to choose the first option.  He backed away towards the window with his staff outstretched, reaching for the feel of ice closing in on Anna's heart.  His magic was fumbling from years of little use and he blindly dove into Anna's heart, desperately fighting to keep the frost at bay.  Elsa still lay on the snowy castle floor, inconsolable and almost ready to call for her parents.

The boy tightened his grip on his staff, refusing to let Anna die.  He knitted his eyebrows, shoving away Elsa's coldness and forming solid barriers around Anna.

_This girl is strong.  I don't know if I can stop this._

He stood his ground, fending off biting whirlwinds that all screamed for Anna's death.  Swirling infernos of wintry cries filled his mind, inspiring him to fight it harder.

 _For her.  For the girl who believes in me_ _,_ he thought, barely sparing Elsa a glance.  Just as he felt the remnants of her power let up, he drove them to the brink of Anna's being, shutting them there and erecting a temporary wall.  Knowing he had done enough, he leapt out of the window and shot off to tell the trolls to expect a visit.

Elsa, on the other hand, had not been thinking about calling her parents.  As a matter of fact, just as the boy disappeared in a flutter of rumpled clothing, her clear blue eyes snapped to the place where he had stood, moments before, and looked to the ground.

 _Footprints,_ she realised.   _So I wasn't just imagining the feeling of magic._


	2. Conceal, Don't Feel

It was safe to say that Elsa would never want to touch anyone again.

She remembered it.  The briefest of touches that caused her to make a mistake and  _almost kill_ Anna, leaving her parents with no option other than to take Anna to the stone trolls and have them erase her memory.  Now, Elsa spent her days holed up in her room, wearing gloves and cursing herself every time she froze a glass of water or created frost trails on the window.

Sometimes, she pretended that the curling patterns on her bedroom window were put there by Jack Frost, a storybook character that her mum had stopped talking to her about since the Anna incident.

"Elsa," she would say, "you're too old for stories now.  You have to be a grown up so that your sister isn't in danger when she's with you."

Even when Elsa begged for something other than the harshness of her daily training, her parents gave her nothing more than half sympathetic, half fearing looks and held onto each other's hands, almost flaunting the freedom that they had.  She didn't know if she hated them for it or not.

"Remember, Elsa - conceal, don't feel," her father said warmly, reaching out to her.  Elsa felt panic rise within her and icy frost curled out from beneath her feet, slowly edging towards the king.

" _No!_ It's not safe," she screamed, clutching her own hand to her chest.  "I'm not ready."

Her parents shared a worried look.

Suddenly, a cold gust of wind threw Elsa's windows open and streaked the floor with snow.  A strong gasp of ice knocked the queen straight off her feet, throwing her to the floor with a loud thump.  The queen Iduna quickly gathered her cloak around herself, suppressing the tremors running through her and casting an irritated glare at Elsa.  Her husband's hand lay on her stomach, as if his touch could melt the cold.

Elsa connected the dots.

"How could you endanger the baby like this?" her father hissed, trying not to get angry at his daughter.

"I-I'm sorry, I didn't know!  And it wasn't  _me_ , I didn't do that--"

"Then  _who did_?"

"Um, I--" Elsa's gaze darted to the picture book still sat on her dresser that she read every night before she went to sleep.   _Jack Frost_ _._

Her mother saw what she was looking at and contorted her features into those of disapproval.

"Elsa, we've been over this," she said lowly.  "You have to be responsible now.  Jack Frost isn't real."

Elsa felt her imaginary world crumble around her.

"If  _I_ can have ice powers, why can't someone else have them, too?" she whispered, looking down at her gloved hands.

"What was that?" her father said, leaning forward but still supporting his shaken wife.

The young girl felt her resolve harden.

"I said, if I can have ice powers, why can't  _he_!"  She punctuated her sentence with an outwards swing of her hand, sending a cold blast towards her parents as she slowly approached them.  Years of hiding her powers and  _herself_ from her sister, years of telling her parents she still loved them and didn't want to hurt them... In that moment, her anger and frustration broke down all of the walls she had constructed  _one brick at a time_ over years.  She knew what she was doing and she knew how to do it - digging deep into her mother until she found the glimmer of life, hardly a speck within her mother, and she reached out with one icy fist of magic to  _crush it_ \--

The soothing breath of snow floated around her, seemingly slowing down time.  Her mother's blatantly terrified expression, her father's face of cold rage.  The almost  _warm_ sensation of some other presence, filling her with the honey-sweet scent of magic.

_I haven't felt warm in so long._

She resisted the almost overwhelming urge to turn and face the owner of the magic; a sudden realisation told her that this person was also there the night that Anna had almost died.

"Elsa!  Have you seen mummy and daddy?" a high pitched voice said happily from the other side of Elsa's door.

The magic retracted its warm feelers, disappearing as quickly as it had come and leaving Elsa with a sense of emptiness.  She belatedly realised that the magic had slowly drawn her focus away from her mother and the unborn child, saving its life.

 _Saving_ his _life._

Her parents both fell back, her mother's lips blue and trembling as she stumbled towards the door.  The broad shoulders of the king were sagging and shaking, following his queen and their son, still curled up in her womb, through the door to see Anna's pigtails rushing off down the corridor.

The king turned back to his eldest child.

"Elsa, I still love you."

The words were hollow.


	3. Beware The Frozen Heart

Elsa was sitting on her bed, looking at two girls playing on the streets when she received the news.

Her parents, attending a wedding, had been caught in a storm and the ship--

"The ship sank.  No survivors," the butler said gravely, dipping his head.  Elsa felt ice crawl on all fours into the crevices of her heart, settling between the two halves and splitting it open.

_No._

Her only chance at salvation.  Her only chance at  _freedom_.  Lost to the stormy seas, her parents with it...

"Now, I will have to be queen."  The statement almost came out as a question and the butler - Elsa never learned his name - simply looked at her, deciding not to ask any questions.  He had worked in the palace long enough to know that Arendelle's royal family had its own strange quirks.

Elsa glanced up at the butler's questioning gaze, before realising that  _nobody knew_.  Of course, miscarriages weren't uncommon, and the King and Queen surely wouldn't want to get their people's hopes up only for them to be let down...

_Does Anna know?_

And then:  _Is it worth it?  Leaving my room and asking her._

Elsa offered the butler a small smile before dismissing him.

 


End file.
